This was the perfect holiday read - I absolutely loved this novel. I think most people are familiar with the fictionalised story of the Dutch maid who became a muse to the painter Vermeer, leading to the famous 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' painting, but despite already knowing the story I still thoroughly enjoyed this historical novel.

Chevalier's writing is so vivid I could picture so clearly every aspect of the house Griet served in, the counter at the meat market she frequented, the studio Vermeer painted in, her bedroom in the attic where she helped to grind the colours for the paint. And such memorable characters, from Griet and Vermeer themselves, to her blind father, Vermeer's difficult wife, his strict but fair mother-in-law, the wealthy but sleazy art buyer, the jealous housemaid, and the scheming daughter.

A wonderfully gripping book - pick it up and be prepared to lose yourself in it for a day.

I remember when this was first published because I was so taken with the painting on the cover. I'd never seen it before and there's something in her delicacy that puts me in mind of my girlfriend at the time. I wanted to read it immediately but, what with one thing and another, never got round to it until now. Cracking novel, and I recommend that, unlike me, you don't wait fourteen years before reading it. The tone is spot on throughout. The vocabulary is also superb; the narrator is uneducated but intelligent and the vocab is never dumbed down. I liked the way she just says "he" when she refer to Vermeer. I got completely drawn in and the last line is perfect. ( )

Angus and Robertson Top 100 (2006-2008). Book #79. A very easy book to read. I have come to really enjoy reading historical novels and this one did not disappoint. It was fairly short, and not at all difficult, which meant I was able to finish it quite quickly. If you like the painting, and are someone who likes to know the story behind it (despite being a piece of fiction) then I would recommend reading this book. ( )

The first Chevalier I read. I'm not a fan of historical fiction, but something (don't know what, but wish I did) about the way she writes is magic for me and now I've read all by her. Maybe you can recommend something similar, out of the vast realms of historical fiction?

ETA: reviewed a couple of years ago, edited for elliptical communication March 2013. ( )

Girl With a Pearl Earring is possibly one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings. But who was the girl? In this novel, her name is Griet. She is a maid in the Vermeer's household, sent by her parents after an accident leaves her father unable to work. Griet is homesick, but she does what is asked of her to help her family. As she works in the household, Vermeer begins to give her more responsibility helping him with his painting; she moves from cleaning his studio to posing for a portrait. She inspires him in a way no one has in a while, but she is unlike other subjects he has painted; most of his subjects are women of class, and Griet is just a maid. Despite resistance from many fronts, Vermeer finishes the painting, and we now have one of the greatest and most studied paintings of all time. This was a good book; at first, I thought it would be like Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which follows a painting through its many owners and times. But I ended up liking how this novel focused on the creation of the painting; I often wonder what inspires art, and though this book is fiction, it still gives me a glimpse into the life of Vermeer and his work. ( )

For a while it seems that it will be... an artist romance. Tracy Chevalier steers her novel deliberately close and tacks abruptly away. The book she has written, despite a lush note or two and occasional incident overload, is something far different and better... [Instead, it is] a brainy novel whose passion is ideas.

Wikipedia in English (2)

Chevalier's classic book takes place during the 17th Century and features Griet, a young Dutch maid, who moves in with the family of the well-known artist Vermeer; she discovers that her profession requires long hours, no privacy, and small contact with her own ailing family. However, Griet's only place of solitude is when she cleans Vermeer's studio and reveals to him her appreciation of his art.

With precisely 35 canvases to his credit, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer represents one of the great enigmas of 17th-century art. The meager facts of his biography have been gleaned from a handful of legal documents. Yet Vermeer's extraordinary paintings of domestic life, with their subtle play of light and texture, have come to define the Dutch golden age. His portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has exerted a particular fascination for centuries--and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's second novel of the same title.

Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer's prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel's quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant--and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model. Chevalier vividly evokes the complex domestic tensions of the household, ruled over by the painter's jealous, eternally pregnant wife and his taciturn mother-in-law. At times the relationship between servant and master seems a little anachronistic. Still, Girl with a Pearl Earring does contain a final delicious twist.

Throughout, Chevalier cultivates a limpid, painstakingly observed style, whose exactitude is an effective homage to the painter himself. Even Griet's most humdrum duties take on a high if unobtrusive gloss:

I came to love grinding the things he brought from the apothecary--bones, white lead, madder, massicot--to see how bright and pure I could get the colors. I learned that the finer the materials were ground, the deeper the color. From rough, dull grains madder became a fine bright red powder and, mixed with linseed oil, a sparkling paint. Making it and the other colors was magical.

In assembling such quotidian particulars, the author acknowledges her debt to Simon Schama's classic study The Embarrassment of Riches. Her novel also joins a crop of recent, painterly fictions, including Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever and Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Can novelists extract much more from the Dutch golden age? The question is an open one--but in the meantime, Girl with a Pearl Earring remains a fascinating piece of speculative historical fiction, and an appealingly new take on an old master. --Jerry Brotton